


Two Cities

by aderyn



Series: Two Hills [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: deduction and precognition, dinosaurs and oceans and geologic time, strangers on a train
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:46:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are in London; they are in Paris; they are London; they are in Paris. They take the Channel Tunnel from Folkestone to Calais, from chalk-cliff to chalk-cliff over the Cretaceous strata.</p>
<p>The counter sticks on the blog, at a year in which they might have crossed the Channel by ferry, inside each other before they even had bodies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Cities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChapBook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChapBook/gifts).



> With thanks!

_“The train tore along with an angry irregular rhythm…but progress was imperceptible.”—Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train_

 

They are in London; they are in Paris; they are London; they are in Paris. They take the Channel Tunnel from Folkestone to Calais, from chalk-cliff to chalk-cliff over the Cretaceous strata.

“Gault clay, “says Sherlock, running his hands, in theory, over the medium through which they’re moving, “a geologic gasp before the mass extinctions.”

“Dinosaurs? I would have thought you’d have deleted them, “says John, tipping up a Styrofoam cup of terrible tea.

“They deleted themselves,” Sherlock says, His eyes slip sideways to a couple up the aisle and diagonally across, two thirtyish men with their heads close together.

“Or the universe deleted them,” says John, making a face. The tea’s too tannic, even for him.

One of the men has something in his face that recalls Sally Donovan, the colouring and the orbital bones maybe; the other has coarser features, hair spiky as a bedstraw. Their conversation is pitched low, intimate.

“Exchanging crimes,” says Sherlock, leaning in, and a flare goes up; John feels it, subterranean, not at all muted by the water and clay, by the thrum of the train.

_You can’t solve something that hasn’t happened yet,_ hethinks, but doesn’t say.   _But please don’t stop_.

“Lestrade’s always said that was my next move,” Sherlock says.

John looks over his shoulder. Perhaps he said it out loud after all.

( _Stimulate the left temporoparietal junction and you’ll have the sensation of a double, unpleasant, mimicking your own posture, your every move_.)

“Pre-solving crimes, “says John. The train hurtles forward through the layers. The sea heaves above them, the same treacherous currents that have picked the bones of Spanish galleons, slipped the sides of fireships and submarines, carried the Allies to the beaches of Normandy.

“Ethical nightmare,” says John.

Sherlock leans in closer, his breath on John’s face.

“The man who looks like Donovan has a problem, a girlfriend, no, a wife (wedding ring, much-twisted, missing from his left hand) whom he doesn’t love, in part because he’s not attracted to women but mostly because he thinks she’s made him change nearly everything about himself (he walks her dog, small, white, longish-haired, Lhasa Ahpso or Shi Tzu, in the mornings, and no longer goes for jogs in the park); he’d divorce her but for the fact that he works for her family, father probably,in a middle-management position he’ll never advance from; the other man has a problem too, most likely having to do with an unpaid loan  and an ex with a grudge but he’d put himself out for Donovan there; he would, given the chance, take his place to spare him the pain(people do, think they’re being noble); they’re not lovers,not yet, but they will be and someone is going to die.”

Sherlock stops, takes a short breath. John feels his tachycardia resolve with a stuttering thump. It’s always, always like that.

Blink. _Fantastic. Even if you can’t do anything about it. (Even if we’ll never know.)_

Sherlock smiles, looks towards the windows. Undersea, underearth, tunnel infrastructure streaming past.

_(Stimulate the left temporoparietal junction and you’ll have the sensation of a displaced copy of yourself.)_

They go where the cases take them, where crimes have happened or are happening or are about to happen, where murders are exchanged in the next seat.  In Paris they’ll eat steak _frites_ and omelettes at a table on canted pavement outside the Bistro Louise, the owner of which owes Sherlock a favor.  They’ll walk the Rue de Ronsard and Sherlock will find what he’s looking for and John will not push someone up against a wall out of jurisdictional delicacy and they’ll be perfectly strung, in one moment, between the earthward pull of the crime and the celestial updrafts of the City of Light.

Across the aisle, Donovan and Bedstraw are still talking, the train-rhythm setting them off on eddies of possibility.

Sherlock’s face has gone pensive, and John has the sudden urge to reassure him _: We’re here. We’ll get there. We’re here. We’ll get there._

Things happen all in a rush. Things happen slowly. Bargains are struck. The earth moves. The chalk of the London Basin cradles them.  The counter sticks on the blog, at a year in which they might have crossed the Channel by ferry, inside each other before they even had bodies:  The chalk and the clay. The steel-and- white of the sea.  John squeezes Sherlock’s forearm. The train moves through the clay. They go on.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence.”—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


End file.
